


we kill the lights (and put on a show)

by Origamidragons



Series: oh, what a lovely day! (everyone's a goddamn junker au) [3]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Banditos - Freeform, Canon-Typical Violence, Everyone’s a Goddamn Junker AU, Gen, Good siblings, Orphaned Kids, Time Skips, gratuitous Spanish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-24
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2019-05-13 10:00:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14746715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Origamidragons/pseuds/Origamidragons
Summary: The gun was a revolver, steely and polished, carefully taken apart and cleaned every day to keep it free of the radioactive dust that permeated every crack and crevice of the newborn wasteland. The girl’s name was Olivia, but he’d taken to affectionately calling herSombrita,little shadow, for how she trailed after him.





	we kill the lights (and put on a show)

**Author's Note:**

> Spanish translations are in the end notes!

_Año Primero: El Guardián_

He didn’t know how long they’d been walking. His feet were moving on autopilot, almost too tired to feel. One beaten tennis shoe would sink an inch into the powdery sand, then the other, then the other. The sun was beating down relentlessly, his father’s hat his only protection against the relentless light. 

On his back, dozing against his shoulder, was a little girl. She was just getting to be old enough that he couldn’t carry her anymore, but the day before when they woke up, there were blisters on her feet that made tears well in her purple eyes whenever she tried to put weight on him. So he carried her. 

Her long hair tickled the back of his neck, making it itch, but he couldn’t raise a hand to scratch it without releasing his grip on either the girl or the gun, and he couldn’t let go of either. The gun was a revolver, steely and polished, carefully taken apart and cleaned every day to keep it free of the radioactive dust that permeated every crack and crevice of the newborn wasteland. The girl’s name was Olivia, but he’d taken to affectionately calling her _Sombrita,_ little shadow, for how she trailed after him. 

The girl and the gun. 

The gun kept him alive. The girl kept him fighting. 

Because if he laid down and died, let his fading memories of his parents and their home overwhelm him as had been so tempting in the first days after the blast, who would look after his little sister?

He kept walking.

_Año Segundo: La Sombrita_

As the sun sank below the horizon, her brother built a small fire with twigs and scraps of brush beneath the shelter of a rock outcropping. They’d learned quickly that no matter how swelteringly hot the outback may be during the day, temperatures plunged during the night. The first night, they hadn’t had a fire. That was another mistake they hadn’t repeated since. She sat in the shadows, legs crossed beneath her, and watched. When he managed to strike a spark and send the fire to flickering life, the firelight caught and danced in her eyes, turning them momentarily from violet to orange. 

“Jesse?” she asked, her voice lilting in the odd accent she’d picked up from him over the months. Or maybe it had been weeks, or years- she wasn’t sure. In the wasteland, all the days blurred together, an endless passing montage of sand and sky and blood. 

He looked up at her, and the flames lit his face from below, casting shuddering shadows around his eyes that for a moment made him look much older than twelve. He looked tired, and she realized with a shiver that she’d lost track of how many people he’d killed. It had to number in the dozens, at least, after the weeks-months-years they’d been wandering. 

She was tired, too. 

“ _Sí, sombrita?_ ” he prompted when she didn’t continue. Worry was already creeping into his voice, and she loved him for it.

“...nothing,” she decided after a moment. She wasn’t sure what she’d been about to say, anyways. Something about family. Something about home. But she looked over at him, at the care and concern that he held for her, and kept her silence. All her questions had already been answered. 

Instead, she shifted so she was lying on her back, staring up at the blackness of the night sky, dotted with pinpricks of light. “What are those?” she asked sleepily. After a moment, she heard him move to lie down next to her. 

“Stars. _Estrellas,_ ” he added in their native tongue after a moment, the sounds rolling off his tongue in a way that sounded like home as she began to fade into sleep. “They’re burnin’ out there in the dark a million miles away.”

She fell asleep with the heat of the crackling fire on her face, dreaming of stars.

_Año Tercero: Los Banditos_

They had a strategy. 

She was small, dainty, almost pixielike, and when she widened her eyes and fluttered her lashes to distract from the unsettling violet of her irises she looked even younger than her seven years. She wore a tattered lavender sundress, the fabric turned pale and soft by years of sand and sun and wear, and a leather jacket two sizes too big for her. Her cinnamon hair used to fall in long tresses around her shoulders, but after the first time someone had grabbed it and _pulled_ and brought a knife up to her face, her brother had cropped it close to her head. 

They survived, and they never made the same mistake twice. 

She would wander out into the open, the battered backpack that held all of their possessions hanging on her back, and the predators of the wastelands would be drawn by the promise of easy prey, of a pretty little treat with dark skin and sharp features. The backpack was tantalizingly heavy, perhaps carrying food, perhaps water, enough to pique the interest of any scavenger. They’d prowl up to her, closer, leering and reaching. 

Then her brother would step out behind them and snap off two shots, or four, or six. However many it took. 

Whether they were really siblings, she couldn’t say with certainty. She remembered no parents, nothing of their hometown besides the blurred tableau of fire and blood she’d seen as she was shepharded onto the refugee vessel. All she remembered was his hand on hers, pulling her along, ensuring she wasn’t left behind. 

They protected each other. It was what they did.

_Año Cuarto: El Pacificador_

The sun was almost directly overhead, and the gun was heavy in his hands. He flicked the barrel open and slotted the bullets in, deliberately, careful not to fumble any and drop them into the sand. 

The engines were gunning in the distance, but he forced himself to take his time, to get it right. He would only have one chance, and he needed to get it right. The sun shone down relentlessly, and he was reminded of a time so long ago, carrying his baby sister on his back under the same brutal sunshine because she couldn’t walk. 

He flicked the barrel back into the gun, and gave it a spin. He could see the cars approaching, three of them, rattletrap scrap metal monstrosities patched up with parts from dozens of different ruined vehicles. Seeing them filled Jesse with a spark of shock and wonder, against his better judgement. Working cars were a rarity in the wasteland. 

He stepped out into the middle of the road, and heard the screech of brakes. 

_Sorry, partner. It’s just the way of things._

Three shots, clear and clean like the sunlight at high noon shining down from above, shattering the windshields as the convoy drivers slumped dead over their steering wheels, a clean bullet hole in each forehead. Two of the cars spun out of control, slamming into each other, and he dove out of the way, the soft cushion of the dust at the side of the road catching him safely as a smoky gasfire plume began to twist into the sky. 

His _sombrita_ was already moving, her small, lithe form slipping up into the bed of the nearest truck and rooting through the shipment with professional precision, tossing down anything that might be valuable: food, medicine, clothing, and water most of all. 

“Jesse!” she shrieked, voice high with the excitement of a good find. “ _Agua!_ ” 

Her dark, mischievous face appeared over the edge of the truck’s bed, and a moment later she was carefully lowering a twelve-pack of bottled water into his arms, the caps still sealed. The smoke rising from the truck’s crumpled hood was getting darker and thicker, and he coughed. 

“ _Sombrita,_ get down from there,” he called, his heart starting to beat a little faster. 

“ _Un momento, un momento. Veo más botellas._ ” 

“ _Sombrita!_ ” he yelled again. 

“ _Un momento!_ ” 

“ _Olivia!_ ” 

There was a beat of silence, and then she was tumbling over the side of the truck, arms full of packaged food and what looked like an orange bottle of antibiotics- and something else. He caught her, softening the five-foot drop, just as the cab of the truck exploded into a greasy orange fireball. They scrambled back, heat washing over them. 

She was huddled in his arms, uncharacteristically quiet and fragile, for a long time as the flames crackled in the background. He let out a long, tired breath of air and leaned his head back against the outcropping of rock behind them. 

“ _Hermanita_ ,” he finally said, and he could feel her tense ever-so-slightly, “you have to be more careful.” 

“Like you’re ever careful,” she mumbled sullenly. Jesse didn’t respond, because she was right. 

“What did you need to get so badly, anyways?” he finally asked, glancing down as she slowly uncurled her body, showing what she was holding so tightly to her chest.

It was a compact square of plastic and electronics, a deep scratch crossing the top and dust lining the side and clogging the ports. He blinked in hazy recognition. “Sombrita, is that...?”

“ _Una computadora!_ ” she confirmed excitedly, the shock of the explosion clearly wearing away as her normal playful demeanor began to return. Her nimble fingers were already at work, scratching the sand out of the cracks in the machinery. 

“You think it’ll still work?” 

“I think I can get it to,” she stated, and he could see the determination in the purple embers of her eyes.

_Año Quinto: La Sombra_

There was the faint, brassy chime of a rusted bell, the sort that used to be mounted above restaurant doors, and Olivia’s head snapped up from the flickering screen of her computer. The tripwire had been hit. 

Someone was outside. 

She made eye contact with her brother across the room, and jerked her head towards the door. They’d been living out of a set of demolished classrooms that had once been part of an elementary school for the past few months. They were rarely disturbed, and no one came looking for salvage inside schools. The alarm system had been her idea, a series of taught wires just above the floor right inside of each entrance, connected to tiny bells. 

She eased the laptop closed and slid it off of her lap, hiding it beneath the battered mattress she slept on. If intruders were to get this far, she didn’t want them finding her most precious belonging. Jesse was loading bullets into his gun before snapping the barrel back into place. She climbed to her feet and moved over to the generator. 

She waited for his nod of confirmation before hitting the switch and killing the power to the lights. 

_Apagando las luces._

She heard a muffled curse from the adjacent hallway as the lights died, leaving the ruined building lit only by the fading orange glow of the setting sun, and grinned. 

She and her brother vanished into the half-dark in unison, he making a beeline to where they’d heard the intruder while she took the longer way around, pulling herself lithely up into the wireframe skeleton of the half-destroyed drop ceiling and crawling carefully towards the disturbance. 

She was nearly there when she heard a single shot and a shout of pain, then a long string of furious Spanish. Her eyes widened and she hastened her pace, reaching another gap in the ceiling tiles and looking down. Her brother was on his knees, teeth clenched, arm twisted behind his back and held there by a stranger, a huge man with dark skin layered with scars, a bandolier of shotgun shells around his waist. Her heart jumped into her throat. 

The man’s other hand was pressed to his cheek, where blood was welling up between his fingers. Two guns lay abandoned on the ground beside them- her brother’s beloved revolver, and a bulky shotgun she’d never seen before.

“Fuck,” the man was saying, with great feeling. “Oh, fuck, you’re just a kid.”

Jesse’s brown eyes flared, and he struggled against the hold on his arm, nearly snarling. “I am _not-_ ”

“How old are you?” the man interrupted, and Olivia thought she could hear something like concern in his voice. She eased forward as quietly as she could, toward the edge of the gap, behind and almost directly above the stranger. “Fifteen? Sixteen?”

“Let me _go_ and gimme back my gun and I’ll tell you.”

“Look, kid,” the man started, “I don’t want to hurt you. I heard about two bandits out here on the edge of our territory, but I didn’t think… I just want to talk. And I want to make you an offer.” 

Olivia felt herself growing intrigued despite herself, and relaxed slightly, listening. 

“Me and some old soldiers I know have got a place set up. Community, you could say. A fair few wastelanders have drifted in over the years. You don’t have to spend the rest of your life out here.”

“Maybe I like it here,” Jesse snapped back defiantly. 

“When was the last time you had a full meal?”

Jesse didn’t answer. Olivia bit her lower lip. 

(The answer was three days ago.)

The man kicked both guns away behind him and released Jesse’s twisted arm. He immediately yanked his arm back in front of his body and rubbed at his shoulder. 

“Where’s the girl?” the stranger asked, glancing around. “She’d be welcome too. You two got a Bonnie and Clyde thing going, or…?”

Olivia didn’t know what he meant, but Jesse obviously did, because he made a disgusted face, but recovered quickly, the corners of his lips twitching up in a mischievous smile. 

“Ask her yourself. _Sombrita_? What do you think?” he called, and Olivia grinned, hearing the cue in his voice. She dropped silently down from the low ceiling, landing squarely on the man’s shoulders. 

“I don’t know,” she said casually, fighting to maintain a mask of nonchalance as the stranger made a shocked, indignant noise and stumbled slightly at her sudden added weight. “Do you have electricity?” 

It took the stranger a moment to realize the last question was directed at him. “Uh- yeah, actually, one of my friends is a genius engineer, got us all set up. Hardly ever goes out. Still no wi-fi, though.”

She pretended to be deep in thought for a heartbeat of a moment, even though she’d already made up her mind. “I kind of like the idea. Jesse?” 

He picked himself up, the snarl of fury and pain from moments ago already vanished back behind his standard smirk. “Well, if my baby sister says so, I _guess…_ ” 

She rolled her eyes at him in the long-practiced tradition of the exasperated younger sibling before redirecting her attention to the man whose shoulders she was still perched on. “ _Soy Olivia._ What’s your name?” 

“ _Mucho gusto,_ kiddo. The name’s Reyes.”

**Author's Note:**

> Some notes:  
> \- Gabriel calls almost everyone more than a decade younger than him ‘kid.’ This is partly because after Junkertown collects enough stray children he starts having trouble remembering all of their names.  
> \- Jesse and Olivia are both English/Spanish bilingual, and usually mix it up when talking to each other. Neither of them have a perfect grasp of grammar.  
> \- Whether they’re actually blood siblings is kind of up for interpretation. All I know for sure if they have a sibling-type relationship.  
> \- Olivia has a string of burnt-out Christmas lights stitched to the hem of her dress by the end of the story.   
> \- The age gap between Jesse and Olivia is about four years. At the start of the story, he’s approximately eleven and she’s around seven. 
> 
> Translations (all Spanish):  
> Año Primero/Segundo/Tercero/Quarto/Quinto: First/Second/Third/Fourth/Fifth Year  
> Pacificador: Peacekeeper  
> Banditos: Bandits  
> Guardián: Guardian  
> Sombra/sombrita: Shadow/little shadow (affectionate nickname)  
> Estrellas: Stars  
> Agua: Water  
> “Un momento, un momento. Veo más botellas.”: “One moment, one moment. I see more bottles.”  
> Hermanita: Little sister  
> Computadora: Computer  
> Apagando las luces: Turning out the lights  
> “Soy Olivia.”: “I’m Olivia.”  
> Mucho gusto: equivalent to ‘nice to meet you’


End file.
